There was an interesting article in last week's Economist about the decline of the View-Master, and a few mentions of its history and many uses. I know that it's really just the advance of technology and that these things cannot compete with a PS4 or whatever, but it still made me nostalgic for that time when I had one of those things. Despite it being somewhat antiquated by the early 80s when I used mine, it was still a pretty interesting toy to have. In addition to having all the discs for whatever movies and stories were popular with me when I was using it (The Black Hole and The Jungle Book were two I remember well), I also had whatever discs could float down through siblings, relatives, rummage sales, trips to national parks, etc...So, as a kid I ended up with this weird , encompassing view (haha) of not only my own pop culture, but also that which preceded my by up to 40 years or whatever it was I found. It was kind of humbling, being presented with decades of expired fads in the face of your own, knowing that someday, Thundercats would be just some really godawful show to be exploited for nostalgic purposes by VH-1. And me, I guess. It reminds me when a friend's dad saw us all playing G.I. Joe out in the neighborhood somewhere and he decided to show us his old figures, which were at least 5 times the size of ours and looked much more like dolls than anything else we had at the time. Cloth fabric clothes instead of plastic!!??
Anyway, remember the View-Master fondly, folks. It's almost gone.
1 comment:
Aw, I'm going to miss these things!
Today I heard Corey Hart's "I wear my sunglasses at night" prompting me to think long and hard about 80's nostalgia. Basically, like many things from the 80's I do not remember this AT ALL making my nostalgia feel false.
Then, I remembered the isolated event happening in the summer of 2001. When my boyfriend and his friend at the time, out of boredom to entertain me during an extremely long car ride to Canada, decided to reenact the video. I still don't know what the hell that song is about.
Anyway, I will honestly miss the view-master. It's something I can legimately be nostalgic about rather than some shitty 80's song. I can't tell you how many time my family used these to cure boredom in all the long car rides to my grandparents. It's weird to think they will be gone.
Now, I'm vaguely remembering an Ancient 7 Wonders of the World slide.
Ugh, I apologize for the length!
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